Yemeni casualties of Saudi war revised up

At least eight civilians have been killed in Yemen in two new Saudi airstrikes that targeted the country’s province of Ibb.

Yemen’s al-Masirah news website said that nine civilians were also injured in the Saudi airstrikes, which targeted Ibb at dawn on Monday.

A local source said the airstrikes targeted two oil tankers in Ibb’s Yarim district, adding that rescue and recovery operations were still ongoing and that casualties could rise.

Also in the early hours of Monday, Saudi warplanes targeted Nihm district, northwest of the capital, Sana’a, with internationally-banned cluster bombs. However, no immediate reports of possible casualties were made available.

Riyadh has been consistently using the banned weapons in its military aggression against Yemen.

In August, the United Nations (UN)’s human rights office called for an independent international investigation of cases of human rights violations in the Saudi war on Yemen, confirming the use of banned cluster bombs by Saudi Arabia against Yemen’s residential areas.

Prominent human rights organizations have also denounced Saudi Arabia’s allies, including the United States and the United Kingdom, for procuring such weapons for the regime.

Saudi Arabia has been engaged in the deadly war against Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to forcefully bring back a former Yemeni government to power.

New casualty tolls released

Meanwhile, al-Masirah on Monday cited a report released by a Yemeni non-governmental monitoring group as saying that the civilian death toll from the Saudi war had now risen to 11,403 people.

The Legal Center for Rights and Development reported that 600 days of Saudi aggression had also left 19,343 people wounded.

According to the report, most of the casualties were women and children.

The group said 380,366 residential buildings, 719 schools and educational institutes, 108 university buildings, and 263 hospitals and health facilities were also destroyed or damaged in the Saudi military strikes.

The Saudi military campaign also left 675 mosques and 1,553 governmental buildings damaged, according to the NGO.

On Sunday, Yemen’s War Media released footage showing a Yemeni counterstrike in the Saudi region of Jizan.

In the footage, which was shot on November 10, the Yemeni army and Popular Committees can be seen taking control of four villages and several military positions, killing and injuring Saudi troops.